“Go ahead,” Lanius urged.
“Are two reasons,” Vsevolod said. “First reason is, Avornan ships fight hard two years ago. Not all Chernagor ships get home. Many losses. They not want many losses again.”
“Yes, I follow that,” Lanius said. “What’s the other reason?”
“Magic.” The exiled Prince of Nishevatz spoke the word with somber relish. “This spring, they send supply ships to my city-state, send food to my cursed son. And they watch ships burn up. They see food burn, see sailors burn. Not want to see that off coast of Avornis. So they stay home.” Vsevolod jabbed a thumb at his own broad chest. “Me, I like to watch ships burn. Oh, yes. I like very much. Let me watch Vasilko burn—I like that better yet.”
Lanius believed him. All the same, the king wondered whether the Banished One could have set the Chernagors in motion against Avornis despite their hesitation. Evidently not. The Chernagors, or some of them, were his allies, yes, but not—or not yet—his puppets, as the Menteshe were.
We can still win, Lanius thought. Avornis wasn’t the only one with troubles. He tried to imagine how the world looked from the Banished One’s perspective. Avornis’ great foe was already doing all he could with the Menteshe. Up in the north, he’d managed to keep Grus from driving Vasilko out of Nishevatz and putting Vsevolod back on the throne there. But if he couldn’t get the Chernagors to work with the Menteshe, they had to make very unsatisfactory tools for him.
What could he do about that? Lanius wondered if thralls would start showing up in the land of the Chernagors. In an odd way, he hoped so. If anything could frighten the Chernagors who followed the Banished One into changing their allegiance, that might do the trick. Down in the south, the Menteshe wizards had made Avornan peasants into thralls. That bothered the nomads not at all. They would have abused those peasants any which way. But in the north, thralls would have to be Chernagors, not members of an alien folk, and that could work against the Banished One. Despising his mortal opponents, he did sometimes overreach himself. Why not in the north, where things weren’t going just as he wished?
Vsevolod said, “When you end this silly war in south? When you go back to what is important? When you drive Vasilko from Nishevatz? Two times now, you lay siege, then you quit and go home. Another time, you go home before you lay siege. For me, is like being woman with man who is bad lover. You tease, you tease, you tease—but I never go where I want to go.”
Perspective. Point of view, Lanius thought again. Vsevolod’s was invincibly self-centered—not that Lanius hadn’t already known that. With some asperity, he said, “I don’t think driving invaders out of our southern provinces is a silly war. What would you do if someone invaded Nishevatz?”
“No one invades Nishevatz,” Vsevolod said complacently. “Chernagors rule seas. Even Avornis does not dare without me at your side.” He struck a pose.
Lanius felt like hitting him. Plainly, the King of Avornis had no chance of making things clear to the Prince of Nishevatz. “Your turn will come,” Lanius said. Only after the words were gone did he wonder how he’d meant them. Better not to know, maybe.
“Not come soon enough,” Vsevolod grumbled, proving he hadn’t taken it the way Lanius feared he might. He gave Lanius a creaky bow. “Not soon enough,” he repeated, and lumbered out of the room.
As a matter of fact, Lanius agreed with him. The sooner the king got the prince out of the city of Avornis and back to Nishevatz—or anywhere else far, far, away—the happier he would be. Lanius wondered if he could send Vsevolod to the Maze until Grus was ready to campaign in the Chernagor country again. He wouldn’t tell Vsevolod it was exile; he would tell him it was a holiday—a prolonged holiday. Maybe he could bring it off without letting Vsevolod know what was really going on.
With a sigh of regret, Lanius shook his head. Vsevolod would figure out he’d been insulted. His beaky nose smelled out insults whether they were there or not. And Grus would be furious if Vsevolod thought he was insulted. The other king needed Vsevolod as a figurehead when he fought in the north. Otherwise, he would seem an invader pure and simple.
Or would he? Vsevolod had henchmen, several of high blood, in the city of Avornis. If anything happened to him, one of them might make a good enough cat’s-paw. Slowly, thoughtfully, Lanius nodded. Yes, that might work. And if it did prove enough, if the king found a cooperative Chernagor, couldn’t he do without the obnoxious Vsevolod? He didn’t know, not for certain, but he did know one thing—he was tempted to find out.
King Grus looked down into the valley of the Anapus, the river just north of the Stura. He let out a long sigh of relief. He’d spent a lot of time and he’d spent a lot of men coming this far, clearing the Menteshe from several valleys farther north. They’d left devastation behind them, but it was—he hoped—devastation that could be repaired if the nomads didn’t come back and make it worse.
Hirundo looked down into the valley, too. “Wasn’t too far from here that we first met, if I remember right,” the general remarked.
“I thought it was down in the valley of the Stura, myself,” Grus answered.
“Was it?” Hirundo shrugged. “Well, even if it was, it wasn’t too far from here, not if you’re looking from the city of Avornis. I know one thing for certain—we were both a lot younger than we are now.”
“Well… yes.” Grus nodded. “I think time is what happens to you when you’re not looking. Except for a few things, I don’t feel any older now than I did then—but how did the gray get into my beard if I’m not?” He plucked a hair from the middle of the chin. It wasn’t gray. It was white. Muttering, he opened his fingers and let the wind sweep it away. And if the wind could have taken the rest of the white hairs with it, he would have been the happiest man in the world.
Time, Grus thought, and muttered under his breath. Time worked evils the Banished One couldn’t come close to matching. If Lanius and Grus himself alarmed the Banished One, all the exiled god really had to do was wait. Soon enough, they would be gone, and he could return to whatever schemes he’d had before they came to power. But he who had been Milvago was caught up in time, too, since he’d been cast down from the heavens to the material world. He might not be mortal in any ordinary sense of the word, but he too knew impatience, the sense that he couldn’t wait for things to happen, that he had to make them happen.
Because of that impatience, he sometimes struck too soon. Sometimes. Grus dared hope this was one of those times.
“Forward!” he called, and waved to the trumpeters. Their notes blared out the command. Forward the Avornan army went.
River galleys glided along the Anapus. As Grus and Hirundo had done when they first met, they could use soldiers on land and the galleys as hammer and anvil to smash the Menteshe. The nomads were vulnerable trying to cross rivers. There, the advantage of mobility they had over the Avornans broke down.
“Let’s push them,” Grus said. Hirundo nodded.
But the Menteshe didn’t feel like being pushed. Instead of riding south toward the river, they galloped off to east and west, parallel to the stream. And everywhere they went, new fires, new pyres, rose behind them. The Avornans slogged along behind them. The nomads lived off the country even as they ravaged it. Grus’ army remained partly tied to supply wagons.